


Where You Lead (I Will Follow)

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Series: All In [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: A Truly Staggering Austenian Display of Affection, Couch Cuddles, Domestic, Feelings Realization, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Robot Feels, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: “Do you ever relax?”The abrupt change in subject throws Connor, for a moment. He considers the question, looking down at his hands folded neatly against his knees. He’d removed his usual jacket, somewhat uneasy with what it now symbolizes as a garment, and loosened his tie. Despite his worries that he would be encroaching on Hank’s much valued personal space, he feels what he would call wanted, and content. Isn’t that what relaxed means?





	Where You Lead (I Will Follow)

Connor rhythmically strokes through Sumo’s fur as he listens to Hank’s meaningless grumbles, fading in and out as he moves around the kitchen. The television blares at him across the room, left abandoned on some channel with commercials geared toward a market best described as “middle-aged female.” He doesn’t know if Hank was watching earlier, but he hasn’t objected, so Connor leaves it alone. It doesn’t matter to him. Beneath his fingers, Sumo groans and leans heavily against his legs, guiding his hands where they’re most wanted. It makes him smile.

“You’re a good dog,” he says, conversationally, as if he expects Sumo to answer. He doesn’t, of course, but Sumo does open his mouth and let out an enormous glob of saliva. It marks his trousers, creating an unpleasant wet spot. “Mostly,” he adds.

At that, Sumo makes a sound strikingly similar to his owner’s, and turns to place one foot on the couch beside Connor – testing his limits, Hank’s explained. He’s only allowed on the furniture with permission, because he sheds and slobbers, but their relationship is not at a point where Sumo considers Connor anything but a guest in his territory. Accordingly, he isn’t a very good listener.

“Sumo,” Connor says, putting his palm to the dog’s chest as he slowly shifts his weight to the elevated foot, “no. You may not come up here.”

Sumo breathes heavily in his face. Another long, trailing drop of saliva leaks from his jowls.

“Sumo!” Hank barks, surprisingly nearby. Connor feels his muscles tense, the side-effect of his quick reaction time and a very… stressful week, too recent to be entirely forgotten. His programming dictates he should leap off the couch and prepare for self-defense protocol, but instead he cranes his neck to look backward. Hank anchors himself against the couch with one hand, frowning down at his dog in an exaggerated way, meant to show he means business. He slurs, “Get down,” in a firm but friendly tone, and Sumo gets down.

As the dog lumbers away, pointedly curling up as far from the couch as he can get, Hank huffs softly. The frown fades, and one corner of his mouth quirks into a sideways grin Connor has only seen a small handful of times. Inside him, in the root of his chest, he feels an internal processor grow warm. It isn’t enough to be concerning, so he puts the thought of it aside. “He listens well, when it’s you,” he says, brushing fur off his pant leg.

“I’d hope so,” Hank replies, raising an eyebrow. “He’s my dog. You’ll get there, though. Stick around long enough and he’ll get used to you.”

The thought that he’s welcome here, for an indeterminate length, brings Connor’s attention back to that budding heat in his chest. Of course, he has nowhere else to go – and neither does Hank, at the moment. The evacuation orders have yet to be lifted. So far as he knows, Lieutenant Anderson is the only human in Detroit. The odds are slim, naturally; if Hank evaded detection and managed to stay in his home, there must be others. Even so, it’s a simultaneously lonely and satisfying feeling: for now, he is all Hank has.

This would be difficult to express aloud, so Connor turns to look at Sumo again, who is occupying himself by licking his paws and ignoring them both. “I think he likes me.”

“‘Course he likes you. What’s not to like?” Hank speaks with an edge of sarcasm, just enough bite that Connor understands it’s partially meant as a dig. He knows his partner well enough now, however, to aurally determine his intentions with an accuracy rating of about 84% and climbing. To confirm, he consults Hank’s expression: unchanged. It’s banter, friendly. The sort of humor Hank seems to prefer. Connor enjoys it, too. “Liking you,” he continues, coming around the side of the couch, “and respecting you, those are two different things. He’s a stubborn fella, and he won’t give a rat’s ass what you tell him until he knows you’re in charge. Scoot over, I’m fuckin’ beat.”

Connor edges from his place on the middle cushion over to the arm on the right side, away from where Hank stands over him and patiently waits. He raises an eyebrow again, but makes no comment. Instead, he turns to collapse into the space Connor had just occupied – his favorite spot, based on the markings left behind by repeated use. The couch sags around him, enveloping him, and he lets out a bone-weary sigh.

They hadn’t done much that day. There isn’t much left in the city to do. Going to the station was out of the question, as was moving too far from the safe radius of Hank’s neighborhood, deathly quiet and seemingly uninteresting to the androids taking refuge in the city proper. Based on what Connor read about St. Bernards, they need daily exercise to maintain a healthy weight and quality of life, but Sumo seemed content enough to lounge about the house that he decided it was all right to put it off a while longer.

Finally, at 11:09am, Hank had thrown his hands in the air helplessly and started cleaning. That took very little time, for how drastic the mess seemed to be. Most of it all went in garbage bags, left off to the side of the front porch with the trash no one had collected since the city shut down. When Hank wasn’t objecting to Connor’s help, obviously disturbed by the concept of an android doing any of his work for him, he watched him warily as if waiting for a bomb to go off. Connor knew why, when he analyzed an old, smelly carton of milk out of habit: the expiry date was in October.

He could have said many things. Instead, he let it pass, and remained silent until Hank’s heart rate dropped to a more acceptable range. Then he asked him to explain basketball.

The kitchen is nicer now, objectively speaking, mostly free of grime and an accumulated month and a half’s worth of detritus. Connor doesn’t necessarily understand the positive or negative perception of smell – or he didn’t, anyway, before – but he thinks that the air feels cleaner now. Perhaps that’s fanciful of him, or illogical, but he has the freedom to be so if he chooses. Hank seems to feel the change as well, and he takes solace in the knowledge that if he is being ridiculous, he isn’t alone.

A thought crosses Connor’s mind. He turns toward Hank and runs a quick scan, examining the particles on his breath and trapped in his beard (mostly residuals of his dinner, some from the alcohol he’d had to steady himself late afternoon), the composition of his faded sweater (cotton-blend, approximately 10 years old, stretched one size larger than posted on the tag), and his pulse (normal, for a man this age and in this physical shape). Based on previous experience, by this time of day Hank usually is on his fourth or fifth glass of whiskey. In its place, he holds a plastic bottle of water.

“You’re hydrating,” he says, registering the surprise.

“Sure.” Hank lifts the bottle and gives it a shake, sloshing the water around. “Can’t exactly go to the grocery store right now, so I figure I better ration what I got.”

Connor is aware he doesn’t mean water. He winces, thinking of how painful it’s going to be when Hank begins the process of full withdrawal. In ideal circumstances, it would wait until Hank could proceed under the supervision of a doctor, but they might not have that option in the near future.

The concept is troubling to him, so much so that dwelling on it sets off an alarm in the back of his head. He blinks several times to chase it away.

“Plastic water bottles were banned in 2034.”

“I didn’t say this was new. Found a half-empty case in the back of my cabinet. Figured water doesn’t go bad. What’re you gonna do, turn me in?”

Connor hesitates as if considering his options, until Hank cracks an eye open and gives him a dirty look. Caught in the act, he shrugs. “I suppose not. But I am glad you’re replenishing your fluids. Perhaps it might be better to save what’s left in the event that further services to this neighborhood are suspended. They’ve already stopped collecting your garbage.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hank says. He drinks what’s left in the bottle like it’s a shot, tipping his head back against the top of the couch cushion. Then he chucks the plastic haphazardly onto the coffee table. “Do you ever relax?”

The abrupt change in subject throws Connor, for a moment. He considers the question, looking down at his hands folded neatly against his knees. He’d removed his usual jacket, somewhat uneasy with what it now symbolizes as a garment, and loosened his tie. Despite his worries that he would be encroaching on Hank’s much valued personal space, he feels what he would call wanted, and content. Isn’t that what relaxed means?

When he says as much, Hank scoffs and gesticulates at him with an empty hand. “You look like somebody jammed a rod up your ass to keep your spine straight, and you got both feet flat on the floor. Like you’re at a fuckin’ job interview. Doesn’t it feel good to take a load off? Rest your weary… uh, bones?”

In another time, he might have taken this opportunity to educate Hank on what exactly constituted as an android skeleton, and how his programming had functioned so that the link between “low on power” and “weary” never occurred to him. As it stands, it isn’t worth mentioning.

“I’ve never needed to ‘take a load off’ before,” he says, shifting his shoes against the rug. Briefly, he senses the small buildup and rapid dispersal of static electricity. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how.”

“Hey,” Hank says, “that’s what I’m here for. I’m an expert.” He pats the space between them as he readjusts, leaning slightly against his arm of the couch to make more room. “Put your legs up.”

At Connor’s frown – or maybe the change in his LED color, if it has changed – Hank snorts.

“I’m not gonna bite ya. Just put your legs up.”

“The soles of my shoes would damage your furniture,” Connor explains, though it isn’t the only reason he doesn’t jump to obey. The couch is relatively small, better designed to serve the needs of one adult man than two, and Hank’s hand rests too close to pretend it doesn’t affect him. The idea of extended physical contact makes the synthetic skin on the back of his neck tingle. He isn’t used to it yet, still adjusting to the way he felt paradigms shift when Hank pulled him into an embrace outside the Chicken Feed. It’s possible Hank isn’t either, since he hasn’t tried it again.

He recognizes this as an invitation, a chance to indulge in proximity for the sake of it rather than to achieve some sort of goal. A chance to experience part of what it means to be alive. It still doesn’t convince him to accept.

“So take ‘em off.” Hank removes his right hand and throws his arm over the back of the couch, curving his spine upward until it cracks. “If they do come off. Guess I never asked.”

Abruptly, Connor realizes Hank has never seen him in different clothes. There would have been no need to wear anything other than his uniform while they were together, but the disparity makes him feel something akin to… embarrassment, perhaps. He’s seen him in his underwear, and Hank has to ask if he can remove his shoes. “They do,” he says, and leaves it at that.

“For a second I thought you might be like those dolls, the ones where you swapped out their feet instead of changing their shoes.”

A quick online search of what Hank means brings back several types of results, none of them very flattering. “Functionally, I’m not that much different from any other android. Cyberlife believed they had perfected the basic composition and structure of our bodies, and saw no reason to change that for me. Accordingly, anything I wear is removable without sacrificing my limbs or extremities, as that would be extremely ineffective,” Connor explains. It puts him at ease, falling back into a role he understands. Explicator, point of reference. Increased quality of partnership through information sharing and gentle teasing. Was this the way he’d been built? If not, how long had the seeds of deviancy rested dormant inside him?

“All right, then, smart ass,” Hank says, stretching out to nudge Connor’s left calf with a slippered foot, “if that’s the case then why’re you acting like it’s a huge commitment? Just relax. Nothin’ left to do, day’s over, time to unwind. Put your legs up.”

Slowly and deliberately, Connor slides his feet out of his shoes. He leaves them sitting parallel to each other on the rug, perfectly spaced, and draws his knees up to his chest. Once his heels reach the couch cushion, he stops, crosses his ankles, and wraps his arms around his legs to help keep his balance. Surely this satisfies Hank’s stipulations without stepping over the boundaries they’ve both put in place during their two-week relationship – two weeks! not nearly long enough to assume any physical intimacy – but Hank rolls his eyes, so it clearly does not.

“Jesus Christ, are you comfortable like that?”

“Very,” Connor lies.

“Come on,” Hank groans, hefting himself up from his lounging position and reaching for Connor’s legs.

With Hank’s less than gentle guidance, Connor reconfigures himself until he’s sitting with his back against the arm of the couch, half-facing the television. His legs, still crossed at the ankles, drape over the full length couch and terminate, of all places, in Hank’s lap. There wasn’t enough room for all of him otherwise, too lanky to be allowed, and Hank had dumped his feet there with so little ceremony it nearly tempts him to believe it isn’t a big deal. He isn’t fooled, however. The faux-casual way Hank’s gaze flicks to his LED light before he turns back to the television gives him ample evidence to the contrary.

“All right?” he asks, returning his hands to their original resting places, far away from the only point of contact between them.

Connor sorts through the responses he could give, pursing his lips. If he says no, undoubtedly Hank would apologize and allow him to arrange himself as he sees fit, or even to leave. That isn’t a desirable outcome. In truth, while that same processor is running hotter and hotter with each miniscule shift in Hank’s position, with each sideways glance, he feels… well. Maybe “all right” is an acceptable way to put it.

“Sure,” he responds. It conveys what he means well enough, and allows him the room to change his mind, if necessary.

Before he met Hank, he might have smiled here, to put any concerns of his conversational partner to rest and ensure an efficient rate relationship growth. Now he smiles simply because he wants to.

“Okay,” Hank says. He holds up two fingers and burrows further back into the couch, the picture of effortless repose. “Step two, watch tv.”

“What program do you prefer?” Connor asks. He watches the path of Hank’s hands as he reaches to fetch the remote off the end table, briefly checking which buttons are which, and is unable to stop himself from adding, “Your television model is capable of voice activated controls.”

“I turned that off the day after I got it,” Hank says, thumb spinning down the volume control. “Too much hassle. I’ll use this, if it’s all the same to you. And it doesn’t matter what we watch. We’re relaxing.”

“Yet you need closed captions? You could have left the volume up.”

“Quit busting my fuckin’ balls and chill, would you?”

Connor does stop asking questions after that, still smiling, if only to himself. Hank mumbles as he sets up the television exactly the way he likes it, and then sets the remote down without changing the channel. He snorts at a joke one of the actresses tells, louder than the tinny canned laughter, and then closes his eyes with another heavy sigh. The episode is nearly fifty years old, Connor discovers as he cross-references the channel guide with his data banks, and nearly everyone involved in its production is long since dead. Even so, in November of 2038, it makes people like Hank laugh.

He considers this, ticking through its implications, studying the ever-increasing domino effect that human culture has on itself, wondering if androids will lack something in their inability to develop well-defined generations through which to pass on mainstays – and by the time he’s sorted himself out again, with no satisfactory answer or even the faintest idea what his conclusion is, seventeen minutes have passed. The clock on the mantle chimed midnight without his noticing, and a new show has begun.

At the other end of the couch, Hank snores softly. His jaw hangs half-open, the probability of a sore throat in the morning ticking steadily upward, and his neck bends in a way that Connor knows causes health problems in both the short and long-term. The arm he left draped on the top of the couch has slipped slightly, precariously balanced by the elbow, hand dangling down to float above Connor’s legs.

He looks more at peace than Connor has ever seen him. Accordingly, even though he knows he should wake him, he decides to let it go. Just this once. Mimicking Hank, he wriggles his shoulders and feels the couch accept him, welcoming him in gladly.

In the corner, Sumo barks in his sleep. He’s dreaming, Connor supposes, wondering what dogs dream about. It’s a relatively soft, quiet noise, for such a big dog, but he feels the muscles under his feet tense in response. He nearly pulls away, hardly eager to get caught staring and have to explain himself.

Before he can, the hand perched above him comes down. It lands on his shin, heavy and warm, each thick finger pressing into the fabric of his pants with varying pressure. He takes a nanosecond to calculate it all – temperature, weight, sensation – and saves it, in anticipation of when Hank pushes him off and gets up to go to bed. It doesn’t happen.

“I remember this,” Hank says, voice thick and slightly rasping with sleep. Connor isn’t sure what he means. They’ve never sat together like this, he’s never touched him like this, there’s nothing in Connor’s extensive catalogs that he can use to tell him what “this” is. Then he follows Hank’s gaze to the screen, and feels incredibly stupid. “It was on when I was a kid. Tuesday nights, I think. Jesus.”

Two young actors hold hands as they move throughout an outdoor environment full of bustling background extras, discussing the terms of their relationship. Hank contains multitudes, as do most humans, but it still isn’t what he really expected from him. “You liked it?” Connor asks.

“It was a phenomenon,” he says, which isn’t an answer. “I was the right age. Quit watching around season four, though.”

“Why?”

“Got too busy to keep up. Besides, you spend three years telling people your character’s going to Harvard, you send her to Harvard. Don’t care if that’s not how life works, tv ain’t life.” Hank coughs, stretches, and squints against the effort to keep his eyes open. As if solely through reflex, the hand wrapped around Connor’s shin squeezes. Inside his chest, Connor’s thirium pump squeezes, too.  “Better’n the remake, though.”

One thumb drags across Connor’s leg, pulling fabric with it. The way it scratches his skin puts a lump in his throat. He chokes it back, unsure what biocomponent had malfunctioned to create such an unusual effect. He doesn’t need to swallow. He doesn’t need to suck his bottom lip between his teeth.

He does both.

One-word questions are easier to manage, so as he attempts to rationalize these irregularities, he says, “Remake?” Hank hums in response, obviously losing his battle against the need to sleep.

“Fuckin’ garbage,” he says. He opens his mouth to say more, but he yawns instead, and shakes his head.

Androids don’t feel pain, Connor reminds himself, pointedly ignoring another tight clench in his chest cavity. Hurt isn’t the right term for this ache, whatever it is, even if it’s the first word he can come up with as definition. He isn’t capable, just as he isn’t capable of eating, or drinking, or of feeling the strange rush of energy up his back as Hank gives him a gentle pat and his eyes slide closed again.

It frightens him, he realizes. The warmth, the throbbing in his breast, his tongue heavy in his mouth, the hand on his leg. It all frightens him, and the thought of losing any of it makes the feeling worse.

“You should go to bed,” he stammers, stumbling on the first word. If his voice is one side of too loud, he tells himself it’s on purpose. “You’ll be sore tomorrow if you sleep out here.”

“Sure,” Hank replies, not opening his eyes. “In a bit.” In two minutes and twenty-four seconds, he’s fast asleep again. This time, his hand stays where it is, rooted to Connor’s pant leg.

Connor can’t bear to move. He stays, so engrossed in his encompassing, staticky panic that he turns off his simulated breathing. It gives him more room to think, to run diagnostics, to study each individual piece of himself in the desperate hope he’ll isolate whatever the problem is and eliminate it. No bugs are found. His machinery is working flawlessly, as ever, sustaining him long into the future, and yet he finds his hands are trembling.

He’s unaccustomed to uncertainty – hates it, even. If he had known this was what deviancy entailed… but that isn’t true.

In the end, he turns his attention to Hank’s show. The lives of fictional characters are designed to be complicated in an uncomplicated way, and though it usually does nothing to hold his interest, he makes an exception. He learns about life in the early 2000s, bachelorette parties and wedding customs, popular fashion, and interpersonal relationships. All the data goes into storage, under several keywords that already existed and a few he has to create. Hank snores his way through it all, right to the end credits, and even after, when the television goes dark with inactivity.

None of it makes Connor feel better. He sits in silence, the faint light from his forehead projecting a yellowish glow onto the couch cushion, and replays the events of the night over and over.

Status: Relaxed – Not Achieved, he thinks to himself, intending it as a joke. Mission Failed.

That doesn’t make him feel better, either.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) If you don't think the Hallmark Channel still exists 20 years from now you're fooling yourself.  
> 2) Hank absolutely has a hundred opinions about the Gilmore Girls, I just didn't have room to put them all.  
> 3) Hank being a millennial fairly close to my age is my favorite thing in the whole world and I will make reference to it as often as possible.
> 
> Thanks to the encouragement, inspiration, and general willingness to listen to me holler about horrendous bullshit from my dear friends. I'm sorry this is what pretty literally watered my crops, got rid of my acne, and cured my depression.


End file.
